Family members and other mourners hug during the funeral for Chan Boonkeut, 15, at the Grace Lutheran Church in Richmond on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2003. Chan Boonkeut was shot due to her older brother's involvment in a local gang rivalry. Event on 10/18/03 in Richmond. JAKUB MOSUR / The Chronicle

Photo: JAKUB MOSUR

Family members and other mourners hug during the funeral for Chan...

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Photo: JAKUB MOSUR

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Asian gang violence escalates in East Bay / No one even recalls origins of the rivalries

The gang rivalry that led to the death of 15-year-old honor student in her Richmond home last week began a decade ago when a group of Asian American students banded together to protect each other from bullies.

But some of the youths, whose parents and grandparents were transplanted to the East Bay from centuries-old villages in remote highlands of Laos and Vietnam, formed street gangs and turned to drug-dealing, stealing cars and engaging in drive-by shootings -- often on each other, according to police and community leaders.

"They adopted the worst things about American culture," said Torm Nompraseurt, the uncle of Chan Boonkeut, the girl killed late Monday when a bullet fired through the front door of her family's home struck her in the head. "They killed my niece for no reason," said Nompraseurt, who is also an East Bay Laotian community leader. "It was just foolish and tragic."

Chan, a student leader at her high school, was buried Saturday after a memorial service in Richmond where relatives and friends wept as they filed past her open casket.

Police say members of one gang, known as the Sons of Death, fired more than a dozen rounds into the Boonkeut home in an apparent effort to kill her older brother, who allegedly has ties to a rival gang, the Color of Blood.

Two days later, two brothers, ages 19 and 22 and alleged members of the Sons of Death, were arrested in connection with the shooting. The younger one has been charged with murder. The older one is being held on unrelated warrants but may also be charged with the girl's slaying.

Investigators believe the Sons of Death were trying to avenge a recent incident in which some Color of Blood members sprayed about 20 bullets at them at an exit off Interstate 80 in Richmond. The groups have also been linked to at least one homicide and several nonfatal shootings in recent weeks, police say.

The attacks are part of an increasingly violent rivalry that has gone on so long that authorities don't remember exactly how gang members began turning against each other.

"No one seems to know why these wars started," said Detective Manjit Sappal, an Asian gang expert with the Richmond Police Department. "I've done a lot of interviews. It goes on and on. But no one can really explain it."

Both gangs are primarily made up of second-generation Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants whose parents came over from the least-developed mountain regions.

Their core members come from hill tribes -- the Khmu, the Mien and the Hmong. These tribes, minorities in Laos, were armed by the CIA and fought on the side of the U.S. government in the Vietnam War. After the Communists took over Laos and Vietnam in 1975, thousands of villagers were relocated to the Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley.

The adults -- if lucky enough to find jobs -- often ended up working long hours as janitors or construction laborers with little time to help their kids.

"Many of the young people don't really see where they fit in," said Bang Karnsouvong, who counsels Southeast Asian youth at Gompers High School, an alternative school in Richmond. "The parents are working long hours and don't know how to help their kids. The kids in gangs, they pretty much grew up on their own. They don't relate to their parents."

The Sons of Death began informally in the West Contra Costa public schools as young Asian American boys banded together to keep from being picked on by African American and Latino neighbors, gang experts say.

"In the early '90s, these immigrants started forming loose alliances to protect themselves," Sappal said. "When it started out, they were in tough neighborhoods just trying to avoid getting picked on at school. These groups evolved into gangs that are now into a lot of different criminal activity."

Many smaller groups gradually became part of the Sons of Death. The Color of Blood apparently started when some young men feuded with the leadership of Sons of Death and broke off, police say.

The two groups were at odds in Oakland in July 1997, when 7-year-old Sou Sio Saephanh was shot to death in his parents' driveway by gunmen who fired from a passing car. The gang members were trying to kill one of his older brothers, Oakland police said.

Most criminal justice statistics show that Asian Americans as a whole are less likely to become involved in crime than virtually any other group. But studies that have looked at crime rates among specific Asian ethnic groups have found that young people of Laotian descent are more likely to commit crimes than whites or Latinos.

One study showed that in Contra Costa County, 10 percent of the juveniles on probation are highland Laotians, a group that makes up less than 2 percent of the county's population.

Karnsouvong said the individualism and assertiveness that are valued in America run counter to the old village culture in Indochina, where working together is valued. Parents view their children as selfish and disrespectful. The kids see the parents as irrelevant.

"You used to just see Asian people always at the top of their high schools," Karnsouvong said. "But there are lots of kids who don't make it in school who drop out or end up in continuation school. These are the kids we really need to reach. A lot of people didn't notice this problem until Chan was killed."